Quixel Megascans—Physically-based 3D vegetation and surface scans
Quixel announced the public beta release of Megascans, making it the world’s largest online scan resource, containing thousands of standardized and physically-based surface scans, vegetation scans and 3D scans. Quixel simultaneously introduced a new line of standalone art tools for Windows and OSX, for easily mixing and customizing surface scans, and quickly exporting scans to major renderers.
“Megascans is a massive leap forward for scan-based pipelines,” says Teddy Bergsman, CEO and co-founder of Quixel. “It exists to make working with advanced scan data fun and easy, solving important issues like consistency, quality and speed in production. Developed in association with industry professionals from major studios including ILM, DICE, The Mill and MPC, we are thrilled to finally release this collective effort that is Megascans to the public.”
The Jungle Book
THE JUNGLE BOOK – (L-R) MOWGLI and BAGHEERA. ©2016 Disney Enterprises, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
During the course of development, Megascans has been adopted by a rapidly growing number of game and film studios prior to its official release. In early 2105 MPC Film acquired early access to the Megascans library to help texture the jungle environments for Disney’s The Jungle Book. Released in spring 2016, it ended up arguably one of the most photorealistic films of all time, and constitutes an impressive showcase for the Megascans library.
“Megascans is an amazing set of assets,” says Damien Fagnou, CTO of MPC Film, who reflects on the experience of using the library: “With a large variety of samples and the incredible quality of each layer, Megascans has become an indispensable resource for MPC artists when building photorealistic environments.”
Adam
Unity Technologies made waves with their real-time short Adam earlier this summer, quickly becoming a massive hit. The Unity demo team were given access to the Megascans beta early on in the project, which ended up becoming invaluable for the production.
“Megascans were a lifesaver for the production of our real-time short “Adam”,” explains Veselin Efremov, Creative Director at Unity Technologies. “For a small team like ours, they were the only way to create high quality environments quickly and with little effort. The library contained everything we could possibly need, and fit so well in Unity’s PBR pipeline.”
Megascans Studio and Bridge
Megascans comprises highly standardized and customizable content, made to plug directly into pipelines ranging from films to games, advertisement to archviz, mobile to VR and more. The library is built around a philosophy of complete ecosystems from the very small to the very large, covering every specimen of a growing variety of biomes, and is rapidly expanding with hundreds of scans every week.
The online Megascans library is available for subscription from $19/month for hobbyists, to $29/month for freelancers, with additional options for studios and indie teams, and the entire line of new scan-based desktop tools are included with the subscription at no additional cost.
Check out the Megascans Gallery for an extensive range scenes.
